2011

15th

Anniversary

On April 30, 1997, the first annual El Día de los ninos/El Día de los libros, was celebrated.

Pat Mora Author, poet, storyteller

Dia: 15th Anniversary

~ Annual Mexican tradition of celebrating April 30th as El día del niño,

the Day of the Child.

~ The tradition evolved from the first “World Conference for the Well-being of Children” held in Geneva, Switzerland in August 1925.

~ Various countries chose dates for celebrating children and childhood and passed the

“Geneva Declaration Protecting Children.”

History of El Dia Del Nino

The goals of this observance from its inception have included a daily commitment to:

~ honor children and childhood ~ promote literacy, the importance of linking all children to books, languages and cultures

~ honor home languages and cultures, and thus promoting bilingual and multilingual literacy in this multicultural nation, and global understanding through reading

~ involve parents as valued members of the literacy team ~ ~ promote library collection development that reflects our plurality.

Many organizations help promote cultural understanding through reading

~ The International Reading Association~ The American Library Association~ National Council Teachers of English~ National Association of Bilingual Education

~ USBBY (US Board on Books for Young People)~ IBBY (International Board on Books for Young People)

Question?????

Can someone from outside a culture write about that culture or country?

For example: If an author is not an American Indian, can that author write about Native Americans?

Mirrors & Windows

Mirrors let readers see reflections of their own lives: windows let them see others' lives.

"Children need to be involved with literature which not only allows them to see through the window to the world around them, but also to see themselves mirrored in the texts with which they come into contact. Multicultural literature offers a rare window into another culture for majority students and a welcoming mirror of their own culture for minority students.”

-Rudine Sims BishopOhio State UniversityProfessorEmeritus

In 1917, Aaluk leaves for Siberia while her sister Nutaaq remains in their Alaskan village and becomes one of the few survivors of an influenza epidemic, then in 1986, Nunaaq's great-granddaughter leaves her mother due to a different kind of sickness and returns to the village where they were born.

Some great books to read!

Esperanza and her mother are forced to leave their life of wealth and privilege in Mexico to go work in the labor camps of Southern California, where they must adapt to the harsh circumstances facing Mexican farm workers on the eve of the Great Depression.

A fictionalized biography of the Nobel Prize-winning Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, who grew up a painfully shy child, ridiculed by his overbearing father, but who became one of the most widely-read poets in the world.

Two cousins, one in Mexico and one in New York City, write to each other and learn that even though their daily lives differ, the boys are very similar at heart.

As Mario and his Papa travel from El Salvador to the United States to be reunited with Mama, Mario's wonderful new shoes help to distract him from the long and difficult journey.

When his mother is sent back to Mexico for not having the proper immigration papers, Jose and his father travel from San Diego, California, to visit her in Tijuana.

From Cuba …Margarita Engle

Sequel to: The Circuit. Having come from Mexico to California ten years ago, fourteen-year-old Francisco is still working in the fields but fighting to improve his life and complete his education.

Semi-autobiographical story about a family of illegal Mexican immigrants who come in to the States, written from the perspective of a child.

Sofia finds that her experiences as a scholarship student at an Episcopal boarding school in Austin only strengthen her ties to her family in the barrio community of McAllen, Texas.

Sixteen-year-old Sophie has been frail and delicate since her premature birth, but discovers her true strength during a journey through Mexico, where the six-year-old orphan her family hopes to adopt was born, and to Guatemala, where her would-be boyfriend hopes to find his mother and plans to remain.

Fourteen-year-old Clara Luna spends the summer with her grandparents in the tiny, remote village of Yucuyoo, Mexico, learning about her grandmother's life as a healer, her father's decision to leave home for the United States, and her own place in the world.

Fifteen-year-old Victor Flores journeys north in a desperate attempt to cross the Arizona border and find work in the United States to support his family in central Mexico.

To help her poverty-stricken family, 13-year-old Lupita enters California as an illegal alien and starts to work while constantly on the watch for "la migra."

While spending a summer in New Mexico with her grandmother, twelve-year-old Izzy makes new friends, learns to cook, and for the first time hears stories about her father, who died before she was born.

It's one single steamy July day at the West 4th Street Court in NYC, otherwise known as the Cage.

Hotshot baller ESPN is wooing the scouts, Boo is struggling to guard the weird new guy named Waco, a Spike Lee wannabe has video rolling…

Nine of YA literature's top writers reveal how it all goes down in this novel in short stories that ingeniously pick up where the last one ends.

Let’s take a look

at other

cultures around

the world

through good books …

MargiPreus

In 1841, rescued by an American whaler after a terrible shipwreck leaves him and his four companions castaways on a remote island, fourteen-year-old Manjiro, who dreams of becoming a samurai, learns new laws and customs as he becomes the first Japanese person to set foot in the United States.

Story mainly without words, with some English and Arabic. Parallel title in Arabic characters. In Sydney, Australia, and in Morocco, two boys and their families have a day of shopping. Readers are invited to compare illustrations in two wordless stories that are intended to be read one from left to right and the other from right to left.

Video on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeUeDDzc7oA

Warriors in the Crossfire

By Nancy Bo Flood

Joseph, living on the island of Saipan during World War II, learns what it means to be a warrior as he and his family struggle to survive in the face of impending invasion.

Linda Sue Park

When the Sudanese civil war reaches his village in 1985, eleven-year-old Salva becomes separated from his family and must walk with other Dinka tribe members through southern Sudan, Ethiopia, and Kenya in search of safe haven. Based on the life of Salva Dut, who, after emigrating to America in 1996, began a project to dig water wells in Sudan.

National Geographic

AuthorsJohn Bul Dau andMartha Arual Akech

John Bul Dau and his wife, Martha, describe the hardships they experienced, including violence, famine, and war, while growing up in the Sudan and explain how they escaped the region to start a new life.

Five-year-old Emma witnesses the brutal murder of her mother during the 1994 genocide massacres in Rwanda and seeks shelter with an aging Hutu woman; but years later when war ends, Emma's fears continue to haunt her as she finds the courage to begin her healing.

Broken Memory;A novel of Rwanda

Charlesbridge

Mitali Perkins

Two Burmese boys, one a Karenni refugee and the other the son of an imprisoned Burmese doctor, meet in the jungle and in order to survive they must learn to trust each other.

Sharon E. McKay

Teenagers Tamanna and Yasmine, having seen their dream to become educated ruined when their school building was burned down by the Taliban, find themselves fleeing from the terrorist organization and facing mortal dangers in their travels through mountain passes.

This novel is about a girl named Jameela, living in post Taliban Afghanistan, whose mother dies during the war. Her father gets remarried, but her stepmother doesn't want her so her father takes her to the marketplace and leaves her there.

Based on a true story about a girl who ended up in one of the orphanages Rukhsana sponsors in Afghanistan through the royalties of her book The Roses in My Carpets.

Wanting Mor

Book proceeds go toThe Libraries in Afghanistan Project: http://www.rukhsanakhan.com/orphanafghan.htm

A boy takes refuge in the jungle with his elephant when the Viet Cong launch an attack on his village in the aftermath of the Vietnam War.

By turns harrowing, dreamlike, sad, and triumphant, this searing debut novel, written in lucid verse, reveals an unforgettable perspective on the lasting impact of the Vietnam War on its survivors and the healing power of love.

All the Broken Pieces

Translation of: Bouteille dans la Mer de Gaza.

Seventeen-year-old Tal Levine of Jerusalem, despondent over the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict, puts her hopes for peace in a bottle and asks her brother, a military nurse in the Gaza Strip, to toss it into the sea, leading ultimately to friendship and understanding between her and an "enemy."

Twins Pollyread and Jackson are saved from a landslide by an extraordinary goat that blocks their path to school; but now the strange goat keeps reappearing each day as the twins' continue to experience a series of mysterious events involving the return of a local troublemaker.

Blue Mountain Trouble

Aboriginal artist and storyteller Francis Firebrace provides the evocative art that has made him known throughout Australia and beyond.

Stories from the Billabong

Francis Firebrace of the Yorta Yorta People

Minli, an adventurous girl from a poor village, buys a magical goldfish, and then joins a dragon who cannot fly on a quest to find the Old Man of the Moon in hopes of bringing life to Fruitless Mountain and freshness to Jade River.

Little, Brown and Co.

Where the Mountain Meets the Moon

Day of the Pelican is the story of a girl and her family and their struggle to survive the turbulent conflict between the Serbs and Kosovars.

Full of historical detail and accuracy, the book provides a rare glimpse into an untold part of our history.

As familiar as children are with the atrocities of the Holocaust, they are unfamiliar with those of the Serbian conflict. Therefore, it is a welcome addition to the historical fiction genre.

In 1974 when her father leaves New Delhi, India, to seek a job in New York, Ashi, a tomboy at the advanced age of sixteen, feels thwarted in the home of her extended family in Calcutta where she, her mother, and sister must stay.

When her father dies before he can send for them, they must remain with their relatives and observe the old-fashioned traditions that Ashi hates.

Sequel to: The Birchbark House and The Game of Silence

Twelve-year-old Omakayas, an Ojibwe girl, draws strength from the land and spirits as she and her family endure numerous hardships in their search for a new home in northern Minnesota in 1852.

As their Alaskan village's only survivors of sickness brought by white men one winter early in the twentieth century, sisters Millie, aged thirteen, and Maura, ten, make their way south in hopes of finding someone alive.

The Great Death

In 1948, eleven-year-old Audrey lives with her father, mother, and three younger sisters in Jewell Valley, a coal mining camp in Southwest Virginia.

Her mother still mourns the death of a baby, her father goes on drinking binges on paydays, and Audrey tries to recover from the scarlet fever that has left her skinny and needing to wear glasses.

Fourteen-year-old Henry, wishing to honor his brother Franklin's dying wish, sets out to hike Maine's Mount Katahdin with his best friend and dog, but fate adds another companion--the Cambodian refugee accused of fatally injuring Franklin--and reveals troubles that predate the accident.

Information Books

A collection of photographs depicting twenty-five families from twenty-one different countries, and includes Chad, Equador, Greenland, Japan, Mongolia, and others, and also describes the cost of a weeks worth of food, and other cultural information for each listed country.

Houghton Mifflin

They Called ThemselvesThe KKK

By Susan CampbellBartoletti

Award-winning author Elizabeth Partridge leads you straight into the chaotic, passionate, and deadly three months of protests that culminated in the landmark march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965.

Marching for Freedom

Based on a teacher, Don Elias Sanchez inHonduras

Kids Can Press

Author Katie Smith Milway

Authors:Husband and Wife team

Marc AronsonMarina Budhos

Clarion Books

Based on the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights; with poetry from the ePals community.

Combines photographs with poetry to offer an overview of the thirty rights granted to all people by the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Every Human Has Rights

After Gandhi;One Hundred YearsOf NonviolentResistance

Profiles fifteen activists who were inspired by the life and work of Mohandas Gandhi to use nonviolent protest as a means of bringing about social change.

During the Nazi occupation of Paris, no Jew was safe from arrest and deportation to a concentration camp.

Yet many Jews found refuge in an unlikely place - the sprawling complex of the Grand Mosque of Paris.

Not just a place of worship but also a community center, this hive of activity was an ideal temporary hiding place for escaped prisoners of war and Jews of all ages, including children

Enjoy Dia with a book from around the world !